August Prompt: To make our stories interesting our characters often have some kind of psychological, spiritual or physical wounds. The process of healing them becomes the character’s arc, the meat in our stories. What mental, physical or spiritual wounds or scars have you used in your stories?

First of all, let me begin by saying that I've noticed something very weird when I do these posts. I analyze my own books, as I was taught to do so in so many English classes. But what is totally strange, is that I talk about things that are there, that as an author when I was writing the stories, I never thought about at all! I never knew I was including any of this! I was just letting the muse "speak" through me, to tell a story. Makes me wonder if any of the authors I studied, ever consciously put in anything that I found in their works. Probably not, eh?

On to the prompt. Psychological, spiritual, or physical wounds. That covers a whole lot of ground. How have I used wounded protagonists to tell my stories?

Never Too Old for the Game of Love and Recipe For Love:Two divorced, almost-40-year-old women, feeling cast aside. One's husband revealed he was gay and now lives with a partner.The other was called fat by her cheating spouse, who still tries to sponge off her whenever he needs to. Both are busily raising two kids each from their marriage, and working hard to pay the bills, now that they don't have a two-income family anymore. Both are convinced that life is going to pass them by, since they were both rejected by the men who swore to love them. Both internalize and convince themselves that if they had only been different, their men might not have left. Both learn better. It was the men at fault, not them, as they discover when each of them meets the right man.

Prescription For Love: Heroine was raped years ago, so has not trusted any man enough to date since then. Her physical wounds are long healed, but her belief that all men want to hurt her, has not allowed her to respond to any man. Until she meets a man willing to give up total control and let her take the lead in deciding how their relationship will progress. Of course he's a man with five sisters, right?

Analysis of Love: Hero is blind since an illness suffered when he was an infant.He's not bothered by it, since it's just his life. Heroine's only wound is her ego, treating men like they are disposable playthings because she can. Until she meets the one man not bowled over by her physical charms, since he can't see them. And he has too much class and self-control to let her see how she affects him. Until it's almost too late.

Love Therapy: Heroine grew up in an abusive household, where her father regularly beat her mom.She fears marriage must become a repetition of that, so she runs away from the first man she loved, to protect herself. And right into the arms of the kind of man she was trying to avoid.Will her first love ever forgive her? Will she forgive herself?

Mayan Prophecy Fulfilled: Heroine is a Chinese vampire who grew up during the revolution, when children, especially females, were given to the state so families could try for a son.Abused and raped, because she had no family to love and protect her, she carries a grudge against the rest of the world. And never expects to love anyone...until she meets an alien who puts her in touch with her own humanity.

Forthe Love of His Life: Hero is emotionally stunted due to growing up an only son of a showgirl, who prostituted when needed, to keep them off the street.He's never had any family other than her, and now that he's a famous action movie star and rich, he has no filter to keep sycophants and drug dealers from using him, since he doesn't know what real friendship/love feels like. When he's sent to a small town by a director hoping to get the performance of a lifetime out of him, he first tries to bully everyone into giving him his way. When no one is impressed by who he is, he gradually learns to look inside of himself to see what is missing. He discovers his own soul, and in the process, loses the heart he never knew he had, to a local woman who thinks that since he's an actor, he "lies for a living." Will she ever believe him? And will his old, wild ways let him go?

I had no idea I was creating so many wounded, damaged people. But then, really, who grows up intact? Most of us have wounds of some sort. The measure of your life is how you deal with the hand you were dealt.

And please remember that August is "Read a Romance" month! I'd be thrilled if you checked out some of mine, during this month of love.